Treasure Planet

Treasure Planet is basically Treasure Island, but in space. I've never read Treasure Island, and the only movie adaptation I'd seen was Muppet Treasure Island, of which I remember the following:
- Tim Curry is Long John Silver
- there's a couple of good songs in it
- I think Gonzo's arms and legs get very long at one point
So I was pretty unfamiliar with the story. My whole family went on a pretty big Treasure Island kick back when I was in high school, but the most I got involved with that was attempting to watch Treasure Planet with them. I watched up to the part where Billy Bones dies and promptly lost interest. (Billy Bones is voiced by Patrick McGoohan. I wasn't even on a McGoohan kick at the time, but a fangirl is a fangirl no matter what the weather).
Now, however, I have watched the whole movie. And it was good, better than I figured it would be, but it did give me the impression that they weren't trying very hard. I think they cared way more about the animation than they did about the script.
Maybe that's why they picked a solid story to base their space movie on: so they wouldn't have to work on the script at all and could focus on animation. Which is a pretty smart way to do it, if you're going to be that way about things. It was a good, solid story with good, solid characters that took little to no effort to come up with.
And I think Treasure Planet is the only Disney animated feature with no real Villain. Long John Silver is the Bad Guy, obviously, but he's the first Disney Bad Guy I've seen who's layered the way he is; he's not just evil. Even their more layered villains are layered in evil ways (Frollo, for instance). Long John Silver is quite human (which is kind of ironic since he's a cyborg); he really does like Jim Hawkins and his affection for Morph is genuine (and was the cause of the only part of the movie that made me cry).
I totally want a Morph, by the way. (Morph is a little pink blob with giant eyes who can change into anything; he is absolutely adorable.)
Treasure Planet does have a genuine Villain in the form of a giant spidery looking dude, but he exits the scene about halfway through the movie, so he's not the Big Bad. He's just a bigger bad than the actual Big Bad.
What I want to know, though, is how does Billy Bones know he can trust Jim Hawkins? He crashes his spaceship and stumbles about hacking and coughing and dying of Lizard Consumption and babbling about how "they'll get his treasure when they pry it from his cold, dead, lizard fingers." Then he hands the treasure over to Jim Hawkins and dies.
Okay, that's great for helping the story along and all, and good for him for choosing somebody trustworthy, but he knew this kid for all of maybe five minutes. Did he figure "Oh, what the hell?" or did he actually have magic lizard powers that informed him that Jim Hawkins's hands weren't the wrong ones?
Also, why didn't they make BEN interesting-crazy (like I've heard Ben Gunn in the other movies is) rather than making him an irritating knockoff of the Genie from Aladdin? When BEN first showed up I was excited 'cause I figured he was going to be crazy (true) and funny (false).
In fact, there wasn't much humor in Treasure Planet at all, which never sits well with me.
There's a big group of post-Hunchback Disney movies that I just forget exist because they left no impression on me. I know I saw both Tarzan and Atlantis but all I could tell you about either of them is that there's a very disturbing death (Tarzan) and the preview was better than the actual movie (Atlantis; to this day I get excited for the movie when I see that preview even though I know the movie was a disappointment). I always lumped Treasure Planet in with them. And, now that I've actually seen it, I feel I was kinda right to do so.
Only kinda, though. I did enjoy it.

End of line.
-Sally